News Wrapup: 8/5/17

After numerous rumours, leaks and teases, Capcom has finally dropped a trailer for the newest member of Street Fighter V’s roster. The Young Commander, Ed, is a genetically modified boy who was raised by Balrog and intended to be a replacement body for M. Bison. Both of these characters are reflected through his fighting style as he combines Balrog’s boxing techniques with Bison’s Psycho Power abilities.

Ed’s V-Skill is the chain-like move he uses to pull himself or his opponent around the stage and his V-Trigger is the large ball of Psycho Power, reminiscent of Decapre’s Ultra from Ultra Street Fighter 4, he launches towards his opponent. Interestingly, his special moves are all performed by either repeatedly pressing buttons or holding down buttons, which is different from everyone else in the cast. You can check out Ed in the free beta test for the upcoming patch from May 11-14.

Opinion: He looks awesome. I love that you get a sense of both Balrog and Bison in his moves but I’m not a huge fan of how buff he is compared to how he looked in Story Mode. His story costume (the hoodie) does look great though. I’m definitely gonna be checking him out when the beta drops but I’m a bit wary of his inputs as I usually just stick to motion characters.

Dead Island 2 still exists, according to Deep Silver.

After a year of silence from Deep Silver, Eurogamer contacted them for an update on Dead Island 2’s development. Deep Silver assured Eurogamer that they are happy with the progress being made on the game by developer Sumo Digital and that they will share more details when they are ready. After being announced in 2013, with an expected release date of 2015, the silence surrounding the first person action/survival game is a worrying sign that has lead many to believe it may be in development hell.

Opinion: The Dead Island games are complete garbage. For the developers’ sake, I hope it doesn’t get stuck in development hell but, personally, I couldn’t care less if Dead Island 2 never came out.

Tekken producer says Japanese game development is over.

In an interview with finder.com.au, Katsuhiro Harada discussed some of his old opinions about Japanese game development. In the nineties, he was witnessing a downfall in Japanese development and thought that it was only a matter of time before games were dominated by the west. Even with strong releases recently, such as Zelda, Nier, Final Fantasy, he still believes that Japan can’t compete at the same level as America. With the insane budgets and number of studios of AAA American games he feels that Japan’s position in game development is “not too high, but we’re not too low”.

Opinion: It’s really sad to see a big name in Japanese gaming say something like this, but I do understand where he’s coming from. A lot of Japanese games, apart from Nintendo’s heavy hitters, appeal to a pretty niche audience outside of Japan. As great as it is that Nier and Nioh sold well, they’re still not gonna match games like Horizon: Zero Dawn or Uncharted.